AFRICA/KENYA - Human Rights Watch denounces abuses and violence against Somali refugees in Kenya

Nairobi (Agenzia Fides) – A report from the humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounces the abuse and violence being used by police against Somali refugees living in Kenya.
There are over 250,000 Somalis living in the three overcrowded camps on the Somali border, in an arid and impoverished area in northeastern Kenya. “People escaping the violence in Somalia need protection and help, but instead face more danger, abuse and deprivation," said the report entitled: "From Horror to Hopelessness: Kenya's forgotten Somali Refugee Crisis."
In 2009, the humanitarian agency expect to see 100,000 new arrivals from Somali, where more than 17,000 civilians have been killed in two years of civil war. Over one million people have left their homes and over one third of the population – nearly 3 million people – depend on emergency food aid.
The report presents documented cases of corrupt police officials routinely demanding cash from Somalis as they arrived or left the camps for other parts of Kenya. The Kenyan government closed its frontier with Somalia in January 2007, however this has not stopped organized crime from continuing to help Somali citizens enter Kenya illegally. In many cases, these people are forced to pay exorbitant amounts of money to corrupt policemen, to avoid being deported to Somalia. “Emboldened by the power over refugees that the border closure has given them, Kenyan police detain the new arrivals, seek bribes -- sometimes using threats and violence including sexual violence -- and deport back to Somalia those unable to pay,” the report affirms.
HRW accuses Kenyan authorities of forcibly returning hundreds, perhaps thousands, of asylum seekers and refugees across the border in a direct breach of international law.
A spokesman from the Kenyan police has rejected the report, affirming that his country has welcomed 500,000 Somalians who “are treated with dignity.” According to official statistics since 1991, the year of the fall of Somali dictator Siad Barre, 95% of Somali refugees have gone to Kenya. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 31/3/2009)